The story of Willi Smith, the designer who invented streetwear

The story of Willi Smith, the designer who invented streetwear

Andrea Tuzio · 2 years ago · Style

He influenced a generation, he was the designer who brought street aesthetics on the catwalk after having determined its canons by inventing street couture and the concept of streetwear, certainly the most important black designer of the 80s.
Today we tell you the story, unfortunately forgotten, of Willi Smith, one of the most influential African-American designers in the history of contemporary fashion.

Alexandra Cunningham Cameron, curator of the “Willi Smith: Street Couture” exhibition at the Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum in New York, said: “The lack of scholarship on Willi Smith created a missing link in our understanding of contemporary fashion and visual culture”

In her life and with her work she challenged the racism and classism deeply rooted in the fashion world through clothing that was accessible to all and gender neutral, her creations were meant for anyone who wanted to wear them: “Fashion is a thing made for people and designers should remember that. Models pose in clothes. People live in them”.

Read also: The history and legacy of Patrick Kelly

Willi Donnell Smith was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in 1949 to Willie Lee Smith, an ironworker, and June Eileen Smith, a homemaker, both of whom had a particular penchant for fashion.

Little Willi immediately showed a propensity for drawing and as a boy, he spent hours drawing while sitting on the floor of his house: “I loved drawing and designing clothes, my mother told me that I was born to be an artist or a designer”. He attended Mastbaum Technical High School for Design and then the Philadelphia Museum College of Art, where he took a course in fashion illustration. After his parents’ divorce, his grandmother Gladys Bush – a fundamental figure in Willi’s life and career – took care of him and encouraged him to continue studying and following his dream of becoming a designer.

He moved to New York to attend, thanks to two scholarships received, the Parsons The New School for Design. In 1965, thanks to his grandmother Gladys who was the housekeeper of a family very close to the designer of the First Ladies, Arnold Scaasi, Willi was able to obtain an internship with the Canadian couturier while also attending a Liberal Arts course at New York University.

In 1967 he left Parsons and began his design career drawing inspiration from what people were wearing on the streets of New York.

From 1969 to 1973 he worked as lead designer for the sportswear brand Digits and hired as his assistant Laurie Mallet – who would become his partner in the future – met in New York while she was in town for a vacation.
The experience, however, has an abrupt end, the company goes bankrupt and closes its doors.

The following year he founded his first label, Willi Smith Designs, Inc., together with his sister Toukie and his friend Harrison Rivera-Terreaux, but due to unfamiliarity with the commercial management of a brand, the adventure lasted only 8 months.

In 1976 he undertook the journey that changed his life. Together with Mallet he went to Mumbai and there he created a small collection of women’s clothing in natural fibres, partly inspired by Indian police uniforms.
That was the turning point, the collection was an unexpected success and shortly after, the two founded the brand WilliWear Ltd.

The brand immediately gained public acclaim, thanks to a collection, that of 1978, influenced by nautical uniforms and Southeast Asian clothing clearly ahead of its time, mixed a relaxed fit typical of sportswear – a legacy of his experience at Digits – with sartorial elements of the highest level: the street couture.

“He mixed workwear, military wear, African and Indian prints. He was in love with denim and the idea of the romantic cowboy, often incorporating tweed, denim or corduroy into his collection. He loved overalls and the utilitarian aspects of the silhouette”, fashion historian Darnell-Jamal Lisby said.

The pinnacle was reached in 1986, when the company’s revenues broke through the $25 million ceiling, an incredible figure.

On April 16th, 1987, however, Willi Smith was admitted to Mt. Sinai Medical Center in New York City after contracting a Shigella infection and pneumonia during a trip to India to buy tissues. His condition worsened drastically due to AIDS, which Smith apparently did not know he had contracted, and he died the next day, leaving an unbridgeable void. The funeral was held on April 20 at the Frank E. Campbell Funeral Chapel in Manhattan, after which his remains were cremated.

Smith, African American and openly gay, managed to emerge in the New York context of the 80s thanks to his interdisciplinary approach to fashion.
He was an all-round artist and patron: in 1984 he involved 21 artists to create t-shirts with silkscreened artwork, these t-shirts reproduced original works by artists such as Keith Haring, Christo, Barbara Kruger, Dan Friedman and many others. The project was part of the “WilliWear Productions Made in New York” collection that was presented with a video, “Made in New York”, directed by Los Levine, the first short film project to showcase a collection to the public. A combination of art, fashion and cinema that reflects what today is a trend followed by the most important fashion houses in the world also because of the impossibility of organizing the classic fashion shows in presence due to the pandemic that upset the customs of the fashion system.

He has made costumes for theater and film, collaborated with Spike Lee, and designed the wedding dress worn by Mary Jane Watson when she married Peter Parker in Amazing Spider-Man Annual #21, in 1987. Smith also designed uniforms for workers in Jeanne-Claude and Christo’s 1983 installation Surrounded Islands as well as for Pont Neuf Wrapped (1985) in Paris.

The New York Daily News called him “the most successful black designer in the history of fashion”, a precursor and a forerunner of the times who created a defined and extremely contemporary style and bequeathed us the concept of streetwear, which is now the dominant theme of contemporary fashion.

The story of Willi Smith, the designer who invented streetwear
Style
The story of Willi Smith, the designer who invented streetwear
The story of Willi Smith, the designer who invented streetwear
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What is post-internet art?

What is post-internet art?

Anna Frattini · 6 days ago · Art

The expression post-internet art can be divisive and at times incomprehensible. Let’s clarify this term a bit. The term emerged in the early 2000s when Marisa Olson, a visual artist and curator who was collaborating with Rhizome was searching for a definition to describe her work as a visual artist—a combination of online and offline creations. Olson’s intention was not to coin a term that indicated the future of contemporary art after the invention of the internet, but rather to find a word that would help her and the collective she co-founded, Nasty Nets, define that branch of art that celebrated, albeit with criticism, the world of the internet. Due to many misunderstandings, this term and its creator have faced numerous criticisms over the years.

post-internet art
Marisa Olson, Performed Listening: Boomerang (2008)

Today, post-internet art means the artistic strand that deals with the impact of the Internet in the world of art and culture. Unlike Net Art, which used the Internet as a medium in the late 1990s, times have changed. Now artists like Amalia Ulman, Jon Rafman and Cory Arcangel use content from the Web to create works that reflect on the relationship we have not only with the Internet but also with social media.

  • Argentina’s Amalia Ulman has used a variety of mediums over the years, from painting to smartphone apps, exploring the links between consumerism and gender identity, social classes and aesthetics.
  • Jon Rafman’success came with 9 Eyes, a series in which the artist “stole” some shots from Google Maps using the Street View mode. His critique of the internet world has reached far, incorporating its rich vocabulary and visual culture to develop poetic narratives capable of capturing the tension between the human and the machine, as seen in his recent exhibition, Ebrah K’dabri at Sprüth Magers in Berlin last April.
  • Cory Arcangel is another post-internet artist who plays with pop culture through techniques like digital hacking and reconfiguration. Arcangel employs bot performances and machine learning tools, such as in 2021 when his solo exhibition Century 21 in New York featured Let’s Play: Hollywood, a type of deep-Q machine learning supercomputing system capable of playing any open-ended RPG game in real-time.

Ph. courtesy Marisa Olson, Amalia Ulman, Jon Rafman, Cory Arcangel

What is post-internet art?
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What is post-internet art?
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On the set of Asteroid City, Wes Anderson’s new movie

On the set of Asteroid City, Wes Anderson’s new movie

Giorgia Massari · 2 days ago · Art

Props from Asteroid City, the new film directed by Wes Anderson, will be featured in an exhibition curated and presented by 180 Studios and Universal Pictures from June 17 in London. The film is set in a fictional American desert town during the 1950s and features a stellar cast, from Scarlett Johansson to Tom Hanks, Jason Schwartzman to Margot Robbie and many others. But, sure to steal everyone’s thunder is the alien, who appears for a few minutes but will leave everyone speechless.

The exhibit anticipates the dreamlike atmosphere and retro aesthetic of Anderson’s new film, exploring the props and costumes we can already glimpse from watching the trailer. A jetpack, a ray gun, a meteorite, a telescope, as well as colorful posters and much more. Visitors will even be able to dine inside the diner, faithfully recreated like the one in the film. The exhibition will be a true immersive experience in Asteroid City, amid the music and colors of the movie, which will accompany visitors as they await its theatrical release, scheduled for June 23, 2023. From the trailer clips, one can already sense the richness of the details and the meticulous care Anderson has toward the set. The colors and cinematography are also remarkable, almost succeeding in drawing attention away from the plot and focusing instead on the harmonious beauty of the shots. Indeed, the pastel palette, from blues to desert beiges, creates an almost dreamlike, at times metaphysical, setting that allows the viewer to relax.

Asteroid City Wes Anderson | Collater.al
Asteroid City Wes Anderson  | Collater.al
Asteroid City Wes Anderson  | Collater.al
Asteroid City Wes Anderson | Collater.al
Asteroid City Wes Anderson  | Collater.al

In short, Wes Anderson’s touch is clearly discernible. His manic use of symmetry and refined framing enhance what is a set bordering on the surreal. Indeed, it is not the real American desert, but the Spanish landscape. The director preferred to recreate the setting outside Madrid, first also evaluating the Cinecittà studios.
So all we have to do is wait and, in the meantime, discover a few frames and catch a glimpse of the objects that will soon be featured in the London exhibition, open until July 8 and bookable here.

Asteroid City Wes Anderson | Collater.al
Asteroid City Wes Anderson | Collater.al
Asteroid City Wes Anderson | Collater.al
Asteroid City Wes Anderson | Collater.al
Asteroid City Wes Anderson | Collater.al
Asteroid City Wes Anderson | Collater.al
On the set of Asteroid City, Wes Anderson’s new movie
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On the set of Asteroid City, Wes Anderson’s new movie
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Glen Martin Taylor and his reconstructed ceramics

Glen Martin Taylor and his reconstructed ceramics

Giulia Guido · 2 days ago · Art

Among the most famous and fascinating artistic techniques, the ancient Japanese art of Kintsugi undoubtedly stands out. It is a practice born from the idea of transforming an imperfection, a damage or a wound into something even more beautiful and perfect. Basically, this technique consists in repairing ceramic objects, even those of daily use such as cups and plates, using gold or cast silver to weld the shards. The final result gives the object a unique look and, what is no small thing, a much higher value than the original. It is precisely from the art of Kintsugi that the artist Glen Martin Taylor was inspired for his works. 

Like Japanese, Glen Martin Taylor repairs ceramics of all kinds, some made by him and others bought but replacing precious metal with everyday objects, from twine threads to metal elements. 

If in Kintsugi’s art the only important part is that of repair, for the artist the act of reassembling objects is as important as that of destroying them. Through these two phases, the artist frees his emotions and confronts them by creating objects that will eventually have lost their primary purpose, but not their importance. 

Discover all the works by Glen Martin Taylor on his Instagram profile

Glen Martin Taylor and his reconstructed ceramics
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Alexis Ralaivao zooms in on the human body

Alexis Ralaivao zooms in on the human body

Giorgia Massari · 18 hours ago · Art

With a photographic cut and a very close gaze, French painter Alexis Ralaivao (1991) is able to cancel the distances between the subjects of his oil paintings and the viewers. Bodily details become the protagonists of his huge canvases. An ear, a hand holding a fork, a pendant swinging above a cleavage, a naked belly. Ultra-zooming bodies almost seem to come out of the canvas, becoming tangible and real. They can be brushed against, sniffed, sensed. The viewer is involuntarily led to establish an intimate connection with the subject, though not seeing his or her face. Simple, everyday gestures lead the viewer on an empathetic journey, allowing him or her to get closer. And here the Dutch figurative painting from which the artist draws inspiration becomes “accessible.” No longer something to be frightened by, almost overwhelmed by, but a moment to relax, to surrender to delicacy.

Alexis Ralaivao translates the everyday and the simplicity of gestures into eternal moments, suspended in time. Calm and lightness are evoked by pastel hues and delicate shades, enclosing the canvases in a dreamlike dimension. The choice of mixed-ethnicity subjects, being himself part of that community, and the photographic cut borrowed mostly from social media, allow Alexis to take a contemporary look at what is one of the most traditional and ancient techniques, the figurative. The boundaries between the traditional and the contemporary are broken, “In classical portraiture there is a distance between the audience and the person represented. I want to erase this distance,” Ralaivao declares.

Thus ephemeral and simple moments, which in the world of social media would disappear after a few hours, become crystallized forever in a dimension that is not meant to be magical or surreal, but rather tends toward inclusion and the breaking down of boundaries.

Alexis Ralaivao | Collater.al
Alexis Ralaivao | Collater.al
Alexis Ralaivao | Collater.al
Alexis Ralaivao | Collater.al

Courtesy Alexis Ralaivao

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